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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Thursday, Jan. 16, 1986
News Briefs
120 killed in Beirut as violence goes on
BEIRUT, Lebanon - At least 120 people were killed and 300 were injured yesterday in the bloodiest intra-Christian violence in more than five years.
President Amin Gemayel's forces crushed supporters of a rival militia leader, Elie Hobeika, in a Christian power struggle that may have dealt a fatal blow to a peace pact that could have ended Lebanon's civil war.
Muslim gunners took advantage of the crisis to launch attacks on Christian positions from Syrian-controlled areas east of Beirut.
Crash linked to drug
WASHINGTON — Cocaine "free-basing" may have led to the fiery New Year's Eve plane crash that killed rock singer Rick Nelson and six other people, federal officials said yesterday.
The officials emphasized, however, that the possibility of a heated cocaine mixture starting a fire aboard the World War II-vintage Douglas DC-3 was "just one angle" in their investigation.
"We're exploring every possibility," one official said. "I want to stress that the investigation is ongoing, and the medical tests are not in yet."
WASHINGTON - A panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health issued one of the strongest warnings to date against smokeless tobacco yesterday, saying the use of snuff and chewing tobacco endangers health and increases the risk of mouth and throat cancer.
Chewers risk health
The panel, made up of physicians, dentists, psychologists and a consumer specialist, was convened partly in response to alarm over increased use of smokeless tobacco among young people, primarily adolescent males.
Home ousts couple
JACKSON, Miss. — An 87-year-old man and his 86-year-old wife were asked to leave a nursing home because their nighttime activity in a single bed was keeping the three other men in the room awake, a nursing home spokesman said.
From Kansan wires.
New law pares student aid
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Student aid will be cut and a hiring freeze will be placed on government agencies when $11.7 billion is trimmed from the federal budget under a new deficit-reduction law.
About $6.9 million will be chopped from the $1.4 billion federal student aid program, including $9.6 million from guaranteed student loans and $55.7 million from other student-aid programs.
See related story p. 8.
Moreover, students applying for the loans will be charged a loan origination fee of 5.5 percent, up from the current 5 percent fee. About 68,000 students will lose federal scholarships called Pell Grants next fall as the family income cutoff drops by $1,000 to $24,000.
Some federal officials said layoffs of federal workers also were a possibility. However, budget director James C. Miller III called on agency beads to look for other ways to make the required reductions — including cutting down on travel expenses and not filling vacancies.
The cuts were set in motion by the issuance of a joint report by Miller's
Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office projecting that the fiscal 1986 deficit would soar to $220.5 billion -- $8.6 billion above last year's record deficit.
Miller said he doubted these cutbacks — amounting to 4.3 percent for domestic programs and 4.9 percent for the military on March 1 — would result in widespread disruptions or anything "like closing the Washington Monument or draining the Tidal Basin".
"I think it's going to be weeks, if not months, before agencies know for sure the ultimate effect on personnel," said Constance Horner, director of the Office of Personnel Management.
But other administration officials said there would be furloughs at some agencies, some workers might be encouraged to take early retirements and visitation hours may be reduced at national parks.
However, she suggested that some employees could be given leaves of absence, a move she said might be preferable to straight layoffs.
Agencies should consider alternatives to help employees make the transition either to other government
Despite possible disruptions,
Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III said he felt the imposition of across-the-board reductions was fair.
jobs or to jobs outside the government, she added.
"I am saying we are going to get some cuts that we otherwise never would have gotten," Baker said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Baker also discounted fears of some economists that wholesale spending reductions caused by the new budget-balancing law could damage the economy. "I don't think cutting spending . . . is going to cause a recession," he said.
Among the cuts outlined yesterday in the OMB-CBO report was a $142.5 million reduction in revenue sharing funds for local governments.
Social Security payments also are exempted from the cutbacks, while Medicare and other health-care programs face reductions of only 1 percent. But few other federal programs were spared from the budget knife.
Mass transit systems around the country will likely see their federal subsidies reduced. The Urban Mass Transportation Administration's
budget of $3.7 billion will be cut by 4.3 percent, officials said.
Meanwhile, at the Federal Aviation Administration, tight travel and hiring restrictions have been imposed, although officials said plans to hire additional air traffic controllers and aviation inspectors as well as security specialists will not be affected.
The deficit projection of $220.5 billion, an average between the OMB and CBO estimates, was nearly $50 billion above the $172 billion target set by the Gramm-Rudman act for fiscal 1986.
The act requires progressively lower annual deficits until the budget is balanced in 1991, setting up a complex mechanism for automatic cuts if Congress is unable to meet the targets through the usual appropriations process.
President Reagan is required under the new law to order the cuts on Feb. 1, and they will take effect a month later.
Congress could come up with an alternative package by then to achieve the same savings, but congressional leaders have said no such plan is being considered.
Reagan welcomes Soviet arms plan
United Press International
WASHINGTON — On the eve of a new round of arms talks, President Reagan said yesterday parts of a fresh Soviet plan for eliminating nuclear arsenals "may be constructive."
"I welcome the Soviets' latest response and hope that it represents a helpful further step in the process," Reagan said.
"We, together with our allies, will give careful study to General Secretary Gorbachev's suggestions."
The tentative U.S. response to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's three-point plan to eliminate nuclear weapons by the turn of the century came hours after senior U.S. officials blamed the arms control deadlock on a failure by the Kremlin to offer "anything that is worthwhile."
With U.S. and Soviet negotiators set to open their fourth round of talks Thursday in Geneva, the Gorbachev offer came as both sides engaged in a final bit of public relations rivalry similar to the November summit.
tions and challenged the Soviets to translate the good will of his summit with Gorbache into "real progress" at the bargaining table.
In a written statement, Reagan promised flexibility in the negotiation.
Gorbachev raised the ante in Geneva with a surprise proposal to rid the world of nuclear weapons by the year 2000 and a renewed invitation to join the Soviet Union in an extended moratorium on nuclear weapons testing.
Although the United States has rejected such proposals in the past, Reagan did not slam the door on Gorbache's plan, regarded as the long-
awaited response to a U.S. position presented in November.
"Many of the elements contained in the response are unchanged from previous Soviet positions and continue to cause us serious concern." Reagan said. "There are others that at first glance may be constructive."
Specifically, Gorbachev called for both sides to reduce nuclear arms that can reach each other's territory by half within the next five to eight years. Beginning in 1990, other nuclear powers would begin eliminating their nuclear arsenals.
Yemen rebels reported defeated in coup bid
United Press International
There were also conflicting reports about the fate of South Yemen's president, Ali Nasser Mohammed.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Rebel troops clashed with government army and navy units in South Yemen for a third day yesterday, but there were reports that loyalist forces had crushed the coup bid and regained control of the pro-Soviet state.
In London, a spokesman for the British Foreign Office said he had unconfirmed reports that the leader of the Arab world's only Marxist country had died yesterday of wounds sustained in the attempted coup, which began Monday.
Sources in the Persian Gulf reported Tuesday that Mohammed, 49, had been slightly wounded Monday during an argument with his vice president, who is thought to be a coup plottet.
All communications to South Yemen remained cut yesterday but there were reports that loyal Mohammed forces had taken control.
But the state-run Kuwati news agency KUNA said yesterday that Mohammed was in good condition and had not been wounded.
The Soviet Union, South Yemen's closest ally, yesterday broke a silence it had maintained since the attempted coup, saying that government troops had restored control in
WASHINGTON — Military pay and Star Wars are the only Defense Department programs that escaped spending cuts under the new budget-balancing law this year, a Pentagon official said yesterday.
The law also has reversed the administration's arms buildup for the first time, Pentagon Comptroller Robert Helm said at a briefing yesterday.
Helm said the Gramm-Rudman law will require the Defense Department to roll back on spending by $5.1 billion this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The $5.1 billion in cuts comes directly out of the Pentagon budget. Another $500 million will come from changes in cost-of-living allowances, most of them in military retirement, and $200 million more will be taken from nuclear weapons items in the Energy Department's budget.
It translates into a total budget cutback of $13.3 billion, which includes downpayment money for ships, planes and other items authorized this year and spent later.
The reductions mean that for the first time in seven years, the Pentagon will have a smaller budget than the one from the previous year.
Caspar Weinberger, defense secretary, ordered two exemptions from the backcacks: $63.1 billion in salaries for the 3.2 million active and reserve military personnel and $2.75 billion for research into Strategic Defense Initiative, an anti-missile defense also known as Star Wars.
Pentagon spending cut in '86
Congress cut about $1 billion from Star Wars in December.
United Press International
Another $2.4 billion in firm fixed-price and multiyear contracts were exempted to preserve management efficiency, the Pentagon said.
Nothing else was spared. The mandated reductions of at least 4.9 percent affected all branches of the service and major weapons programs including the MX missile, the Trident missile submarine and the B-1B bomber. Those programs will have to be stretched out, Helm said.
"SDI received a very large cut, from Congress in fiscal year 1986 and the feeling was it couldn't stay on the track it was on" if more was pared. Helm told a news conference.
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